EDSAC lives

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2014-Nov-30, at 11:07 AM, Ian S. King wrote:
> I would vote for the Whirlwind.  In addition to an interesting
> architecture, the machine has a fascinating history!  -- Ian

It's one of my favorite early machines too. It was just so far-looking in objective. While all the other first-generation machines under construction at the time - state-of-the-art themselves - were intended for number-crunching applications in what would become batch-processing, Whirlwind was leap-frogging them by 10-15 years in vision, targetting real-time simulation with human interaction.

One of the SAGE blockhouses should have been kept intact with the full & functioning equipment installation.



> On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 12:30 AM, Dave G4UGM <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I would say that in the US you have CHM and the LCM which exhibit working
>> mainframes. There are also MARCH and the New Jersey (I think) Museums which
>> show working machines. In the UK several working exhibits have been
>> "mothballed". The Science Museum has discontinued Pegasus demos, my project
>> to restore some of the Pegasus i/o equipment at MOSI has been suspended,
>> and
>> the Hartree Differential Analyser is to be removed from display. Personally
>> I would rather that money was expended on keeping real mainframes running
>> rather than building replicas,
>> 
>> I also note that the Baby Replica at MOSI is now around 16 years old, it
>> first ran in 1998. Its almost an artefact in its own right...
>> 
>> Dave Wade
>> G4UGM
>> 
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Brent
>>> Hilpert
>>> Sent: 30 November 2014 07:48
>>> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
>>> Subject: Re: EDSAC lives
>>> 
>>> So, we have the ABC, Colossus, Manchester Baby, and now the EDSAC.
>>> 
>>> Anyone for the ENIAC? Univac I? IAS machine? Whirlwind?
>>> 
>>> How come 3 of the 4 are in Britain?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 2014-Nov-29, at 9:12 PM, John Foust wrote:
>>>> The National Museum of Computing unveils EDSAC re-creation:
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30131447
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS
> Ph.D. Candidate
> The Information School
> University of Washington
> 
> An optimist sees a glass half full. A pessimist sees it half empty. An
> engineer sees it twice as large as it needs to be.